Hailey's POV
The moment the car door shut, the world broke open.
The sound was sharp—final—like a seal snapping into place, trapping me inside something I couldn't escape. The outside noise vanished, replaced by the dense, padded quiet of Kingsley's car, but the silence didn't last.
Pain detonated behind my eyes.
It wasn't a headache. It wasn't even a migraine at first. It was pressure—violent and sudden—as if something inside my skull had been struck with a hammer. My vision blurred instantly, the edges of the world smearing and pulsing. Light fractured into shards that stabbed straight through my temples.
I sucked in a breath that burned on the way down.
The restaurant felt impossibly far away now. Tyler's voice echoed in my head, distorted, looping, overlapping with
